Toto

This is a pretty bizarre assertion. Rape and murder were crimes in pagan society, and slavery was subject to law, not "at will". Christians accepted slavery as long as it was economically viable.

Wads4

Didn't they have laws against that sort of thing? --especially Roman law from which we derive much of our own. The Greeks had a well developed sense of human dignity. True, that classical culture was based on slavery, but Christianity did not have much to say against it, and the medieval prince-bishops positively cultivated it. 2000 years of Christianity applied the concept of human dignity mainly to Christians,-and not always even then. Everyone else was heretics, infidels, witches, and heathen negroes, Hindoos and Chinees to be forcebly converted or killed at will unless they could defend themslves.

Roger Pearse

It was Constantine who passed the first law to prevent men raping their slave-girls, if I recall correctly.

One of the things that I really wish was online, for things like this, is the Theodosian Code. An English translation exists, but it's in copyright and the copyright is owned by a firm of lawyers. Brrr.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Wads4

Thanks,--I suppose there was nothing official earlier than Constantine or Theodosius? I suppose we must give credit where credit is due.

Malachi151

On roman Slavery:

http://abacus.bates.edu/~mimber/Rciv/slavery.htm

So, this is an example from the 4th century, compiled and used by a 6th century scholar. We are well into the Christian era by this point.

They defiantely had issues with slavery.

You can read the link for the rest. Roman slavery was no good thing, but the Christians didn't little to change this, other than make it possible for Christians to leave non-Christian masters, which induced many slaves to convert to Christianity, but Christian masters could still hold Christian slaves.

lpetrich

I'm not impressed with this kind of rhetoric, because the more fundie sorts of Xians are too much like the more fundie sorts of Muslims. It should not be very surprising that the more fundie sort of Xians have been very willing to side with the more fundie sort of Muslims on "moral" issues.

Consider how the Bush Administration has been so willing to take the side of the Vatican and the more strict Islamic countries over family-planning issues.

Sam Harris has a different take on that speech, in ‘God’s Rottweiler’ Barks:

gurugeorge

What on earth does that have to do with whether Bede is correct about the threat Islamism, or Islamo-fascism, presents to the liberal, democratic, capitalist way of life? Whether you love or loathe either side, if you take the Islamists at their word (and why wouldn't you?), they want to destroy this way of life, kill lots of Westerners, etc., etc.

How "like" fundie Xians are fundie Muslims? You might argue that, given half a chance, there are element in the Xian community who would blow themselves up in public places, killing lots of innocent people, but the fact is they don't. Nor do Buddhists, Daoists, Jains, etc.

Much as I disagree with Bede on many points (being a MJ guy myself), on this he is quite correct. "Liberals" need to quit going for easy targets (i.e. targets that don't fight back) like Xtians, and go for the hard targets, the ones who really promise a totalitarian way of life (the seclusion and demotion of women, the murder of homosexuals, etc., etc.). Why don't they? Because it's too scary. But that's precisely why it has to be done.

Contemptible as Xtianity may be in many ways, rationalists, secularists, "liberals", true liberals (a different beast) and humanists have much more in common with Xtians, even with rabid Evangelicals, than with Islamo-fascists, and to continue to cut Islamists so much slack (in the media, academia, etc.) is a grave error. The Left, generally, thinks it can use Islamists as a pawn in its game against liberal, democratic capitalism, but Islamism is very much its own beast, and will eat the Left up given half a chance.

But I suppose this is wandering a bit off-topic now.

Malachi151

Here is a prime example. Remember the whole "Muhammad Cartoons" ncident? Guess where those cartoons were not shown? Largely Christian America. Guess where tehy were shown? Hardly Christian Europe.

Guess who came to the defence of the Muslims and denounced the cartoons? The Pope, and other Christians.

When it comes down to it, all religous people will defend any religion against blasphemous attacks because none of them want their religion to be the target of blasphemy either. They will all move to shut down critical discussion of any religion because they don't want their religion to be subjected to critical examination either.

However, I comepletely agree with you. Anyone siding with, defending, or aiding Islam in any way is a friggen moron and.... wait for it.... "enemy of freedom".

I cannot tolerate these so-called liberals who stupidly defend Islam out of a sense of "pluralism". >

lpetrich

First, it's rather amusing to think of how far back Berossos's 432,000 years goes. Looking at a timeline of human evolution, it is well before the first clear evidence of our present-day species, Homo sapiens (sapiens); our ancestors back then were likely Homo heidelbergensis.

And I must say that I don't have any idea of what the source might be of Augustine's claim that some Egyptians had claimed that their nation goes back 100,000 years.

I thought a bit about what I found distasteful about certain of Bede's arguments, and I think I have a clue about that now. It's an "all things to all people" quality, whose prototype is in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23; Paul was so desperate to convert people that he made himself seem like whoever he is trying to convert.


Richard Carrier has written an interesting essay, Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False?, which has some interesting comments relevant to this thread.

In 17. Did the Earliest Christians Encourage Critical Inquiry?, he wrote about early Xian epistemology. He wrote it response to J.P. Holding's claim that "throughout the NT, the apostles encouraged people to check" and "seek proof and verify facts.". He found something very different. One distinguishes true from false prophets because true prophets are virtuous and false ones are wicked; both true and false prophets can work the same miracles. Elsewhere in the NT, the main "sources of knowledge" are carefully selected parts of scripture, and when that failed, revelation ("God revealed this to me!").

At least according to Origen, Celsus often ran into "Do not question! Believe!" when he asked Xians about his beliefs -- and Origen was proud of that. Origen did talk about investigating scripture and stuff like that, but "nothing about checking witnesses, documents, physical evidence, histories, or anything empirical at all." And he even argued that trying to investigate would be a waste of time for many people, since doing so would waste time that they would need to get Saved in.

In 7. Was Christianity Highly Vulnerable to Inspection and Disproof?, he takes on the question of what sort of historians the Gospel writers were, especially the best one, Luke. He noted that none of them were the least bit critical or skeptical, that they never compared different sources or expressed skepticism about what they described, as pagan Greco-Roman historians often would. RC even quotes one of his predecessors as saying
Though
In Would the Facts Be Checked?, RC expands on this theme, asking what sort of critical thinkers the early Xians had been. He noted that many people would convert more or less immediately, which is not how one comes to some conclusion when one has carefully studied something. As RC noted, the early-Xian sales pitch was something like "scripture says Jesus would rise, our ability to prophecy, heal, and speak in tongues proves we're not lying, and our leaders say they saw Jesus--in some sense or other, they never specify details, but you can trust us!"

RC then turns into the arguments that early Xian apologists had made.

Justin Martyr's main source was scripture, with hardly any other source. And how did he convert to Xianity?
And Justin Martyr imagined himself arguing with a Jew because Jews believe in the same sacred books, which go back much farther than pagan religious literature.

Elsewhere, he makes the argument that Xianity must be true because Xians are the best at exorcism of demons. Elswhere,
As RC comments, Justin Martyr was not exactly very rational or skeptical; he wasn't anything like Cicero or Lucian of Samosata.

Athenagoras had a similar sort of argument, which RC summarizes as "Screw you, all you academic lunkheads, and screw all your logic and science and scholarship. We have the Law and the Prophets. Everything else is obvious. End of argument."

And likewise for Tatian: "He converted simply because he found other religions morally repugnant and illogical, was impressed by the antiquity of the Bible, found the Christians to be the most moral followers of that most ancient text, and therefore concluded that they had the right interpretation of the most authoritative book--authoritative for no other reason than "our philosophy is older than the systems of the Greeks" (§ 31) and is the most morally attractive (e.g. § 32). End of story." RC also noted that "Not only does Tatian show no interest at all in checking the facts concerning the resurrection of Jesus, but spends a lot of ink arguing that philosophy and scholarship are a stupid waste of time."

countjulian

Et se .